I say “seemingly out of spec” because I am not an electrician, and this requires more understanding of wire classifications than I possess. Regardless, we found a story a little while ago about devices that ship with power cables that are labeled for voltages and amperages that are significantly lower than what they are capable of carrying.

My cable

The minimum requirement for cables with a C13 connector is American 18 gauge (AWG), and they must be able to carry 10 amps. I own the device from the blog posting, like many others at PC Perspective. Again, the device itself (minus the cord that plugs it into the wall) is perfectly fine. The allegation is that the power cord (that goes between the wall and the transformer power brick) cannot carry its full, labeled wattage. The head claims that it can carry 250V at 10A, which is 2500W.

My cable, close up.

Wecut open the insides of the cable to see what gauge wire was used, and we were able to remove the insulation with an 18 gauge wire stripper. This is where my lack of applied electrical skills fail me. The power cable feels as flimsy as a quarter-inch audio cable, but I am not qualified to measure the actual internal wires' thickness. It might meet the minimum (18 AWG) requirements, or it might just be thick insulation. I wouldn't trust it, especially not at hundreds or thousands of watts. The blog post author apparently tested their own cable under load, and they claim that it started to melt at 2.6A 123V (320W).

The blog author's wire vs a standard cable's wire. It's hard to tell how thin the Vantec one is, because the standard cable was twisted.

Now, to power a single hard drive and USB controller, you are not going to be drawing those hundreds or thousands of watts from the wall. The main concern is if you swap cables around with other devices. For instance, if that cable would be attached to a high-end gaming desktop, then it could easily see wattages in that range that are sustained for most of a play session, or even higher.

So I guess the takeaway from this is do not trust every power cables that you receive. Make sure your high-power devices are using the cable that came with them, or one from a vendor that you trust. Just because it says it can handle any given load, does not mean that it can.

Firefox can remove any threat that Superfish presents with a simple step and 24 hours; indeed they could prevent any similar issue using a questionable or downright poisonous SSL Certificate simply by blacklisting them. They specifically quote the ability of OneCRL to block even obfuscated certs before the Network Security Services level if the certs are properly recorded on the blacklist in this Register article. This would lead to a much more secure web, requiring attackers to invest significantly more effort when attempting to create fake or dangerous SSL certs. There is a flip side to this, for there are those who may attempt to have valid certs added to the Blacklist and so there must be a way of policing the list and a way to remove certs which should not be on the list due to being placed there in error or because of a change in the software associated with that certificate. It is also likely that there will be court cases attempting to have the blacklist removed if it does come into being as Superfish is not the only business out there whose business model requires phishing or at least a way around proper SSL certification and best practices which will no longer be viable if we are allowed to block their mutant SSL certs.

"Firefox-maker Mozilla may neuter the likes of Superfish by blacklisting dangerous root certificates revealed less than a week ago to be used in Lenovo laptops."

Update 2: Outside sources have confirmed to PC Perspective that this driver contains DirectX 12 as well as WDDM 2.0. They also claim that Intel and AMD have DirectX 12 drivers available through Windows Update as well. After enabling iGPU graphics on my i7-4790K, the Intel HD 4600 received a driver update, which also reports as WDDM 2.0 in DXDIAG. I do not have a compatible AMD GPU to test against (just a couple of old Windows 7 laptops) but the source is probably right and some AMD GPUs will be updated to DX12 too.

So it turns out that if your motherboard dies during a Windows Update reboot, then you are going to be spending several hours reinstalling software and patches, but that is not important. What is interesting is the installed version number for NVIDIA's GeForce Drivers when Windows Update was finished with its patching: 349.65. These are not available on NVIDIA's website, and the Driver Model reports WDDM 2.0.

It looks like Microsoft pushed out NVIDIA's DirectX 12 drivers through Windows Update. Update 1 Pt. 1: The "Runtime" reporting 11.0 is confusing though, perhaps this is just DX11 with WDDM 2.0?

I am hearing online that these drivers support the GeForce 600 series and later GPUs, and that there are later, non-public drivers available (such as 349.72 whose release notes were leaked online). NVIDIA has already announced that DirectX 12 will be supported on GeForce 400-series and later graphics cards, so Fermi drivers will be coming at some point. For now, it's apparently Kepler-and-later, though.

So with OS support and, now, released graphics drivers, all that we are waiting on is software and an SDK (plus any NDAs that may still be in effect). With Game Developers Conference (GDC 2015) coming up in a little over a week, I expect that we will get each of these very soon.

Update 1 Pt. 2: I should note that the release notes for 349.72 specifically mention DirectX 12. As mentioned above, is possible that 349.65 contains just WDDM 2.0 and not DX12, but it contains at least WDDM 2.0.

On Thursday, Tim Sweeney joined the Unreal Engine 4 Twitch Broadcast to announce “Unreal Dev Grants”. In short, Epic Games have set aside 5 million dollars to pass out in increments of five thousand ($5000 USD) to fifty thousand dollars ($50,000 USD), with no strings attached. If you are doing something cool in, with, or involving Unreal Engine 4, you are eligible and can use the money in any way. You keep all your “intellectual property” and equity, and you do not even have any accountability requirements.

It's free money that you can apply for, or they will even approach you with if they see you doing something awesome (you can even nominate other people's projects). The only “catch” is that your work needs to be relevant to Unreal Engine. From there, it could be anything from congratulating an awesome pull request for the engine on GitHub, to giving an indie (or even AAA) game a little bit of a financial boost. Tim Sweeney was telling stories about mowing lawns for the $3000 it took for him to launch ZZT. He mowed lawns so you don't have to.

I know, the nerve of some people. Jacob from EVGA emails me this week, complaining about how he has this graphics card and motherboard just sitting in his cubicle taking up space and "why won't I just give it away already!?"

Fine. I'll do it. For science.

So let's make this simple shall we? EVGA wants to get rid of some kick-ass gaming hardware and you want to win it. Why muddle up a good thing?

The EVGA GeForce GTX 960 delivers incredible performance, power efficiency, and gaming technologies that only NVIDIA Maxwell technology can offer. This is the perfect upgrade, offering 60% faster performance and twice the power efficiency of previous-generation cards*. Plus, it features VXGI for realistic lighting, support for smooth, tear-free NVIDIA G-SYNC technology, and Dynamic Super Resolution for 4K-quality gaming on 1080P displays.

The new EVGA ACX 2.0+ cooler brings new features to the award winning EVGA ACX 2.0 cooling technology. A Memory MOSFET Cooling Plate (MMCP) reduces MOSFET temperatures up to 11°C, and optimized Straight Heat Pipes (SHP) reduce GPU temperature by an additional 5°C. ACX 2.0+ coolers also feature optimized Swept fan blades, double ball bearings and an extreme low power motor, delivering more air flow with less power, unlocking additional power for the GPU.

Welcome to a new class of high performance motherboards with the EVGA Z97 lineup. These platforms offer a return to greatness with a new GUI BIOS interface, reimagined power VRM that focuses on efficiency, and are loaded with features such as Intel® Gigabit LAN, Native SATA 6G/USB 3.0 and more.

Engineered for the performance users with excellent overclocking features. Includes a GUI BIOS that is focused on functionality, new software interface for overclocking in the O.S., high quality components, M.2 storage option and more.

The Process (aka how do you win?)

So even though I'm doing all the work getting this hardware out of Jacob's busy hands and to our readers...you do have to do a couple of things to win the hardware as well.

The contest will run for one week so you will have more than enough time to listen to or watch the podcast and get the super-secret answer. We'll ship to anywhere in the world and one person will win both fantastic prizes! Once the contest closes (Wednesday, February 25th at 12pm ET) we'll randomly draw a winner from the form below that got the correct answer!

A HUGE thanks goes to our friends at EVGA for supplying the hardware for our giveaway. Good luck!

Gizmodo was kind enough to gather all the rumours and speculation about Samsung's unreleased phone into one article. We do know that Samsung has trademarked both Galaxy S6 and S6 edge, with the Edge expected to be a smaller Note 4 Edge perhaps with curves on both sides. For the interface they are expect to run their Touchwiz interface on top of Android Lollipop 5.0.2, with changes to the interface to make it much more like vanilla Android which will be very welcome if true. There is not a huge amount of information on the internals but what there is can be found in this rumour roundup.

"There are smartphones, and then there are smartphones. Phones that you pay attention to. Phones that are like whoa. The iPhone is one. Maybe the new Nexus. The Galaxy S3 was one. The S4 and the S5? Not so much. But the S6 looks poised to make a splash again. The S6 is looking serious."

Once again, NVIDIA brings some really good games to their GRID service, which is currently free for all SHIELD owners. The concept is that NVIDIA will compute the graphics at their server farms, accept your input, and return an audio/video stream of the result. This is a very convenient way to access content, but it cannot replace actual ownership for guaranteed access to specific art that find intrinsically valuable. It can help you discover new content, though.

This week, Saint's Row IV is available to be played on the GRID gaming service. Its predecessor, Saint's Row: The Third, was published on GRID earlier this month. It would be good to play them in order, and they are both worth your time. I did find that the campaign of Saint's Row IV was a bit less unique because the majority of missions were a handful of side-missions strung together, while Saint's Row: The Third had more scenario-based objectives, with the side-missions as an option to build up stats (or just be fun) between these. On the other hand, the movement mechanics were genius in IV. Play them both.

Looking ahead, next Tuesday will be Alan Wake. This is a survival-horror title from Remedy that makes you appreciate just how long your batteries last in real life. Basically, electricity is light and light is a vulnerability for the monsters that want to destroy you. The week after, the third of March, is Metro: Last Light Redux. This is one of the most visually demanding games available, and it is still used as a GPU benchmark at this site.

Saint's Row IV went live last Tuesday, while Alan Wake arrives on the 24th and Metro: Last Light comes in last, on March 3rd.

The perfectly reasonable 2 kilowatt Superflower is only able to provide a paltry 166.6 amps on its single +12v rail so you will need to be absolutely positive that your rig will not need a more powerful source of power. Available only in the UK, it is possible that Superflower is not exaggerating when the claim it will accept 100V~240V, perhaps a budding North American electrician could set up a test to see if this 80 PLUS Platinum rated PSU can actually be powered by any mere wall wart. No ones seems to mention the weight of this PSU but it does measure 150 x 86 x 220 mm which is a pity as this PSU would be perfect for an mATX build. You can catch a video of this PSU in action on the last page of the review, powering a PC not an arc welder.

"‘Holy Moly’. This is the PG version of the first words I said when we were offered the new 2000 watt Superflower power supply for analysis. Renowned and highly respected UK overclocker Ian ’8Pack’ Parry partnered up with SuperFlower for the creation of this new monster unit. The ’8 Pack Edition’ is a fully modular design, 80 Plus Platinum certified and ships with enough cables to choke Godzilla."

Since 2014 Lenovo has been selling consumer laptops installed with an innocuously named program, Superfish. For those not in the habit of wiping their laptop and installing the OS fresh to avoid the bloatware generally present on consumer products, you have been sharing the exact same SSL certificate as every other Lenovo owner and the icing on the cake is that it is self signed by Superfish, not a certificate authority. This means any and all transmissions done on a browser (apparently other than Firefox) could have easily been unencrypted by anyone who captured your wireless transmissions since the SSL key you were using is well known seeing as it is present on every recent Lenovo machine.

Lenovo is downplaying the security issue and emphasizing that Superfish was just intended inject ads into your browser based on history and that it could be disabled manually or by not agreeing to the terms and conditions when you turn on your laptop for the first time. As the commentors on Slashdot rightly point out, that argument is disingenuous and exposing your customers to a man in the middle attack just so you can serve them up some targeted advertising is a gross oversight. Samsung has not seen much success with the argument that their monitoring software could be manually disabled either. The program is no longer bundled on Lenovo laptops, as of this year.

"... doesn't mention the SSL aspect, but this Lenovo Forum Post, with screen caps, is indicating it may be a man-in-the-middle attack to hijack an SSL connection too. It's too early to tell if this is a hoax or not, but there are multiple forum posts about the Superfish bug being installed on new systems. Another good reason to have your own fresh install disk, and to just drop the drivers onto a USB stick."

Just because White Wolf and the World of Darkness were purchased by Icelandic studio CCP Games who are now doing nothing with the IP doesn't mean you can't explore the world with your favourite clan of vampire. Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines which was originally released in 2004, gained a massive following of players many of whom are skilled modders who have been cranking out patches and mods over the years. Rock, Paper, SHOTGUN has just posted about two of the newest, one which unlocks Bloodlines Antitribu clans allowing you to play a far wider variety of clans and use their particular Disciplines. That particular team is currently working on Sabbat storylines for the game as well. In addition a new version of The Final Nights is available with a huge list of changes, additions and improvements. Even if you have no Humanity left you should check out the work that has gone into keeping this game vibrant and interesting.

"I’ve been conservative with Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines. The only modding I do is boshing on ye olde unofficial patch, without even enabling the optional new bits, and maybe replacing my character model with a nicer NPC model. I might be bolder next playthrough, as apparently we’re spoilt for choice with Bloodlines mods at the moment."

Kansas City got Google Fiber back in 2012 and not surprisingly a lot of users jumped to this ~$70 service from their current ISPs the moment they could. Two of the incumbent ISPs suddenly came to the realization that there was demand for broadband at this speed and turned on some of their already laid and configured fiber connection so they could start to offer actual broadband and now several years later AT&T discovered that they would need to do the same to be able to attract customers in that market. The fiber has lain dormant for quite some time as most ISPs have argued that there was no demand for that level of connectivity; at least until Google offered it and customers left them in droves proving that the demand had always been there.

"We've moved quickly to bring more competition to the Kansas City area for blazing-fast Internet speeds and best-in-class television service," said John Sondag, president of AT&T Missouri, without apparent irony."

Make sure to visit your UEFI after installing Crucial's Ballistix Elite DIMMs' as this 16GB kit defaults to the JEDEC profile of DDR4-2400 @ 16-16-16-39. One quick click later to XMP and you will hit the advertised DDR4-2666 16-17-17-36. This kit ships with the Crucial Ballistix M.O.D. utility to give you temperature readings in real time, see exactly what frequencies and timings you are running at in Windows and for those kits which sport LEDs, the ability to program a lightshow. Hardware Canucks spend some time overclocking this kit and found the best performance to be with DDR4-2750 @ 12-12-12-26-1T. It is a good kit of DDR4 but remember it will cost you, in this case about $335.

"Enthusiasts have been waiting for Crucial's Ballistix Elite to hit the market and it is everything we could have wanted; overclocking headroom, performance and a lifetime warranty...it's all here."

If you ever feel ignored when offering technical advice to executives or anyone ranking above you in your business then this statistic about Server 2003 that The Register quotes will come as no surprise, "47 percent of 1,000 Fortune 500 IT executives had no idea that end-of-life was coming". Of course this does not signify that they were never told nor that Microsoft obfuscated the EoL date, it shows that they completely ignored the professionals that work for them and warned them. Now they will have a choice, they can run servers that no longer receive security updates nor support from Microsoft or they can pay $600 per server for a year of extended support, with that amount likely increasing every year. It does not make business sense to migrate to every new server or client platform that is released but postponing that upgrade for over a decade in the assumption that your supplier will never cut you out is bordering on idiocy. Just to add to your frustration, none of those supposed IT executives are likely to be fired as a direct result of this poor planning and on the off chance one does leave; the severance they pick up will likely be worth more money than you have made since the release of Server 2003.

"MICROSOFT HAS PUT a price on extended support for servers running Windows Server 2003 after it reaches end-of-life this summer."

As regular subscribers of the PC Perspective Podcast are aware, not every headset is created equally and while poor to moderate sound reproduction on the speakers can be ignored to a certain degree, poor sound capture quality on the microphone cannot. Kingston's original HyperX Cloud was not too bad for sound capture and most of the ears which were attached to people that reviewed the headset found it quite enjoyable. Techgage tried out Kingston's follow up product the stereo Cloud II with inline DSP to allow virtual 7.1 surround sound recently, focusing more on the audio reproduction than capture. From their review it does indeed sound like Kingston has put out another audio winner but as they did not do much testing of the audio capture quality we are not sure if this product might make it onto a podcast near you.

"Sequels… they’re either blockbusters (The Empire Strikes Back) better than the original or busts (Caddyshack II) that should have never seen the light of day. In the world of PC peripherals, it’s rare when we see a direct follow-up to a product. Kingston, though, bucks the trend with its new HyperX Cloud II gaming headset. Is it a blockbuster, or a bust?"

It would be very nice to see the restoration of the ability to overclock mobile NVIDIA chips so that users can decide if they wish to or not but perhaps it is worth reminding those who want to overclock that they are doing so at their own risk. This does not mean the voiding of the warranty which will happen but refers more to the actual risk of damage to the GPU and the laptop it is in, by exceeding the thermal design of the laptop you risk destroying the expensive machine you just bought. Laptops have nowhere near the thermal flexibility or compartmentalization of a desktop, not only can you not pop the side off or slap in a new fan, the heat from the GPU is bleeding directly into other components in the laptop as their is no significant air gap between components.

Restoring the ability to overclock either natively or through third party applications is something that would be very appreciated, however there should be a strong warning presented to users if they do chose to. If you are running GPU enabled BOINC or Folding@Home on an overclocked laptop which you then leave unattended, it is your fault if the damn thing catches fire not NVIDIA's so do not go suing.

"Nvidia has removed the ability of users to overclock their GeForce GTX 900M series GPU equipped laptops in a recent driver update. The driver in question is the GeForce R347 driver (version 347.29). Before the update users of the laptops in question had no problems overclocking or even underclocking their GPUs."

If you are interested in the top five most played PC games, according to Raptr, then the rank order has not changed much. Each of them bled a lot of mind share though. In January, the top twenty games accounted for 61.93% (give or take rounding error) of total time, with 44.05% of total time dominated by the top five. In December (2014), the top twenty games had 78.41% of total play time, or 57% for just the top five. This means that PC gamers, at least those using Raptr, were spending a lot more time playing a diverse spread of less-popular games last month.

The biggest change (by rank) was Warframe, which lost six ranks and 43.2% of its play time, even though that was only 0.6% of Raptr's total. The second-largest change in the bottom fifteen games is Diablo III, which climbed up five ranks due to a major update that was released halfway through the month. The third-largest change is Dragon Age: Inquisition, which lost almost half (43.3%) of its play time, resulting in a drop of three ranks.

Even though the ranking had a few big movements internally, all twenty were also on last month's list.

During a conference call with investors, analysts, and press, Yves Guillemot, CEO of Ubisoft, highlighted the issues with Assassin's Creed: Unity with an emphasis on the positive outcomes going forward. Their quarter itself was good, beating expectations and allowing them to raise full-year projections. As expected, they announced that a new Assassin's Creed game would be released at the end of the year based on the technology they created for Unity, with “lessons learned”.

Before optimization, every material on every object is at least one draw call.

Of course, there are many ways to optimize... but that effort works against future titles.

After their speech, the question period revisited the topic of Assassin's Creed: Unity and how it affected current sales, how it would affect the franchise going forward, and how should they respond to that foresight (Audio Recording - The question starts at 25:20). Yves responded that they redid “100% of the engine”, which was a tremendous undertaking. “When you do that, it's painful for all the group, and everything has to be recalibrated.” He continues: “[...] but the engine has been created, and it is going to help that brand to shine in the future. It's steps that we need to take regularly so that we can constantly innovated. Those steps are sometimes painful, but they allow us to improve the overall quality of the brand, so we think this will help the brand in the long term.”

This makes a lot of sense to me. When the issues first arose, it was speculated that the engine was pushing way too many draw calls, especially for DirectX 11 PCs. At the time, I figured that Ubisoft chose Assassin's Creed: Unity to be the first title to use their new development pipeline, focused on many simple assets rather than batching things together to minimize host-to-GPU and GPU-to-host interactions. Tens of thousands of individual tasks being sent to the GPU will choke a PC, and getting it to run at all on DirectX 11 might have diverted resources from, or even caused, many of the glitches. Currently, a few thousand is ideal although “amazing developers” can raise the ceiling to about ten thousand.

This also means that I expect the next Assassin's Creed title to support DirectX 12, possibly even in the graphics API's launch window. If I am correct, Ubisoft has been preparing for it for a long time. Of course, it is possible that I am simply wrong, but it would align with Microsoft's Holiday 2015 expectation for the first, big-budget titles to use the new interface and it would be silly to have done their big overhaul without planning on switching to DX12 ASAP.

Then there is the last concern: If I am correct, what should Ubisoft have done? Is it right for them to charge full price for a title that they know will have necessary birth pains? Do they delay it and risk (or even accept) that it will be non-profitable, and upset fans that way? There does not seem to be a clear answer, with all outcomes being some flavor of damage control.

They are not the most glamorous of peripherals but they do save your desk and can help you with your accuracy, so pop over to Overclockers Club to take a look at XTracPads. They offer three different sized gaming mats from the paper sized Carbonic at 8.5" x 11" x 1/8" to the Ripper at a larger 11" x 17" x 1/8" to the immense Ripper XXL at 36" x 18" x 1/8" which is going to cover a goodly piece of your desk. They are priced at roughly $15, $22 and $35 so it is not a major investment to pick up and well worth it if you are looking to replace an old mat which has seen better days.

"From a casual gamer perspective, I am sure someone who can game competitively will likely notice a greater improvement than I. Personally, I have had trouble with mouse pads that were too hard, not stiff, but solid cutouts of plastic (I don't even know if they are made anymore really). I have also had issues with mouse pads that accumulate a bunch of gross after a bit of use. I can live with poor or cheap mouse pads, but now that I have had a taste of the other side I really don't want to anymore."

Another publisher signed a deal with GOG to sell and distribute games, DRM-free. To launch their partnership with Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, six games have been added and five of them are on sale. LEGO Batman (50%-off), the two LEGO Harry Potter games (each 60%-off), F.E.A.R. Platinum (50%-off), and Bastion (60%-off) will be at their reduced prices all week.

The sixth title comes from their acquisition of Midway Games and is actually a three-game combo: Mortal Kombat 1+2+3. One person in the comments said that they are DOS-based versions and controller support might be a problem (although JoyToKey should solve that problem nicely - especially for a fighting game without analog controls). The first two games only support single PC multiplayer, although Mortal Kombat 3 allows LAN. Of course, LAN support should be easily extended to online multiplayer with people that you know online via VPN software, but I have not tried it myself and lag could be a problem.

All six titles are DRM-free, because it's GOG and that's how they roll.